Hacker News Reader

Comment by ppeetteerr | Hacker News Reader

A one-time wealth tax doesn't seem to make a ton of sense.

The current loop hole is that loans are not taxed so people take out loans against their assets thus never paying income tax. Tax those loans and refund taxes when the loans are repaid.

View on HN

> current loop hole is that loans are not taxed

The loophole is the stepped-up basis. Loans are fine since they have to be repaid one way or another. Loans that defer taxation until the liability extinguishes itself are the problem.

The way I understand it, the point of stepped-up basis was to avoid double taxation with estate tax. The problem is that estate tax has been mostly de facto eliminated.

Also I'd argue that the loophole is the not having to treat the loan as a concrete valuation/liquidity event, as the goal of most tax regulations is to prevent people delaying paying tax (with things like IRAs being exceptions).

Of all the victims, people should have the least sympathy on taxation (double or otherwise) on the estate. The US (federal - states have different limits) already sets the minimum threshold for estate tax collection at about $14 million. At that level, we dont, and should not care about double, triple, or n-level taxation on the estate (which is what it sounds like you are implying).

I described how I believe the current state came about. You should have been able to tell the directionality of my comment from what else I chose to mention. Yet you still found it appropriate to pile on with some equity-eschewing rallying cry. Given that what you're saying is the direct opposite of the situation we've actually arrived at, do you think that maximally-presented changes will have any hope at succeeding?

But really, you should learn that this kind of inflammatory policing of the ingroup is very toxic, and only alienates people from your overall goal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com